New Washington Post Executive Editor

[Michael_ Gee]

From the viewpoint of Washington Post Co., the only profit centers of the Washington Post newspaper that are left (since they eviscerated their foreign news coverage in a major blunder years ago) are their horrible syndicated columnists. It's selling the likes of George Will and Charles Krauthammer to publishers of East Butt****, Red State Journals/Heralds/Tributes, etc. that generates more income than outflow.

 

[wicked]

I took a look at a couple of those section fronts that the memo was gushing over, and they were disasters. I think I was able to pick out the top story on the Maryland politics page, but I'm not too sure.

 

[jackfinarelli]

Have a take, don't suck. <jimromereference>

Seriously, one of the things I had read... and I'm pretty sure this pertains to local NEWS coverage in the Post... is the incoming editors felt there wasn't enough local copy. Metro usually has 8-10 pages and only five or six stories are locally based, or something like that.

I don't think we're going to start seeing high school football and such in the Post (their varsity coverage is usually web-only, I believe... correct me if I'm wrong), but maybe we may see a local-local-local push.

Having subscribed to the Washington Post for the last 42 years, let me say that the Metro section is rarely 10 pages long except on days with tons of paid death notices/In Memoriams. Often times, it is 6 pages. Metro coverage in the Post has been - for the last 40 years - the single least interesting part of the paper. That is not because there is no local news; that is because the Post tends to ignore most of it.

In Sports, the Post devotes a large fraction of its news space to high school sports. Even on days when the Sports Section is only 8 pages long, there is usually a full page devoted to high school sports. And it is not devoted to football and boys basketball exclusively. If I ever want to know about high school volleyball or field hockey or girls' soccer, I can find it in the Post. Normally, I find it very easy to ignore such coverage...

The Post sells itself as a news soruce that is local when it needs to be but is never to be considered as "local-local-local". If that is really the direction the paper is going to take - as you suggest -, I think the Post will be taking a huge risk in terms of its core readership - many of whom really do not give a rat's ass about 'local-local-local stuff".